Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Incompetence Or Intent?

Three major events have occurred over the past few weeks that call into question the competence and motives of the Obama Administration.

The first was the explosion and subsequent oil spill on the British Petroleum offshore oilrig, Deepwater Horizon, in the Gulf of Mexico. The second was the failed terrorist car bombing in New York City’s Times Square, and the third was the massive and devastating flooding in Tennessee.

President Obama and his administration’s officials have been claiming that they were on top of the oil spill from “Day One”. However, the facts would seem to refute those claims, as most news reports indicate it took several days for the administration to become engaged in the crisis. I’m not one who subscribes to conspiracy theories, but I’ve found it very convenient that after decades of safe oilrig operation this disaster has occurred so soon after Obama upset his base by appearing to open up new areas off the Atlantic Coast to new oil exploration.

Many Democrats, and even some Republicans, have seized upon this oil spill as an excuse to end any talk of new exploration off America’s shores. It should be noted that Russia, China and several other nations are already planning to drill for oil in the international waters off our coasts. If we don’t go after those reserves, they will. It’s safe to say that none of those nations will be as concerned about drilling in an environmentally responsible fashion as we would be. It’s also worth noting the presence of oil rigs in much more hostile parts of the world than the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Coast of the United States, such as the North Sea. In fact, there are more than 5,000 offshore oil platforms worldwide – and all have been operating safely for decades.

Before we jump to any conclusions or react impulsively, we must determine what really happened on the Deepwater Horizon. As retired fire-rescue captain Matt Bruce reports, there are many questions about this disaster and its causes.

Then there’s the attempted terrorist attack in Times Square by Faisal Shahzad, which some have characterized as “amateurish”. CBS News has reported that Shahzad had been on the terrorist watch list between 1999 and 2008 because he entered the country with approximately $80,000 and made no less than eight trips to and from Pakistan in the past several years.

However, Shahzad was removed from the list shortly after Obama began shutting down Bush-era terrorist investigations in 2009. We were lucky his IED fizzled instead of detonating in Times Square, since the systems that should have prevented this man from becoming a naturalized citizen and getting the chance to perpetrate this attempted attack failed spectacularly. Only the quick thinking of a New York City street vendor — who noticed smoke coming from Shahzad’s SUV — the NYPD, and the NY Fire Department averted disaster.

Despite the existence of video surveillance of the suspect and the fact that the FBI was initially tracking him, Shahzad had no difficulty boarding an Emirates Airlines flight. If not for the keen eye of an immigration officer, who prevented him from successfully fleeing the country, he would’ve eluded capture. Apparently at some point during their surveillance, the FBI lost track of him.

Most remarkably, the Obama Administration — which only reluctantly acknowledges terrorism — has been touting its success in this affair. It’s also worth mentioning that the media and NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg have been contorting themselves ever since, consciously trying not to call Shahzad a Muslim terrorist, while simultaneously worrying not only about his motives, but also about “backlash” against Muslims and Pakistani-Americans.

In fact, Bloomberg initially posited the ludicrous theory that the bomber might be some “deranged person” or someone who’s unhappy with the healthcare bill. He even went so far as to use the incident to push for closing the so-called “gun show loophole”, one of this anti-Second Amendment advocate’s favorite causes.

The third and final event has gotten very little press, even though it involved the greatest loss of life and property. The floods in Tennessee have killed 23 Americans and devastated a huge swath of the “Volunteer State”. Yet we’ve heard almost nothing from President Obama on this disaster. Thousands of Americans lost their homes and suffered the worst devastation imaginable, yet the President has for the most part ignored this catastrophe and the human suffering it inflicted.

If President George W. Bush were still in office and had reacted so slowly and incompetently to these three equally newsworthy situations, the lamestream media would be savaging him relentlessly. But as per usual, they’ve given the Community Organizer-in-Chief a pass.

So what are we to conclude about Obama’s motives in the aftermath of his mishandling of these three events? Should we assume that in the case of the BP oil spill that Obama actually wanted it to become an environmental disaster, the better for him and his allies to use as an excuse to end all further talk of future offshore oil drilling? After all, if there’s one thing we do know about this administration, it’s that they never let a good crisis go to waste.

In the case of the Times Square terror attack, should we assume that the President simply doesn’t understand the threat? Or should we instead assume that he and the team he’s assembled are incompetent and incapable of fulfilling their primary responsibility of protecting the people of the United States?

As for the floods in Tennessee, should we accuse Obama of the very thing so many on the left erroneously and venomously did of President Bush after Hurricane Katrina — that he’s a reverse racist? The population of middle Tennessee is mostly white, so using the left’s logic it only stands to reason the president doesn’t care about white people.

I’ll leave the answers to these questions up to everyday Americans, but will add that giving Obama a pass on his responses to any or all of these events is simply unacceptable. Our country is at war and facing economic and military threats on a global scale; our government must respond in an appropriate matter to every catastrophe, or the consequences will be devastating and far-reaching.

The riots that have plagued Greece in the wake of its financial collapse could soon be replicated in other European nations. Subsequent bailouts by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund have forced the Greek government to make cuts in services and entitlements, inciting the entitlement population to violence. Judging by the past sixteen or so months, what we’ve witnessed in Greece could be a disturbing glimpse of our nation’s future. Yet Obama and the Congress seem hell bent on traveling this road to disaster.

There are dangerous days ahead for the United States and our allies. There are credible reports that Iran and Syria have provided Hezbollah with SCUD missiles and are planning preemptive attacks on Israel this summer; there are also reports that the Iranians have plans in place that could even lead to an attack on the United States itself. Terrorist groups are targeting us here at home, even as our troops face them overseas. There are potential threats from North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and China, just to name a few. We cannot have an administration that either is too incompetent to recognize the dangers we face, or perhaps worse, willfully negligent in its failure to protect American citizens from those it does recognize, simply for political advantage.

Music for CRF used by permission of:

About Me

Steve is a fiscal & constitutional conservative. He joined the Republican Party to try to return it to it's core conservative principles of smaller government, lower taxes, states rights, adherence to the Constitution and accountability of both our representatives and the government in general.
In addition to hosting 'Conservative Republican Forum' on BTR, he is also a contributor to Parcbench.com. He was the 2010 GOP nominee for Florida State House in District 89 as well.
He's an American first, a Conservative second and a Republican third.